


Exceptional

by amaresu



Category: Echo Bazaar
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, Feast of the Exceptional Rose, Gen, Masks, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:03:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaresu/pseuds/amaresu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one questions the masks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exceptional

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Echo Bazaar, any, mask

No questions where they come from, no one even thinks to question it. One day everyone is a flutter with anticipation and debates over just which parties to attend and the next the masks are everywhere. They arrive in the shops and at the stalls over night, ready to be sold in the morning, and no one thinks to question how so many shipments go out at the same time. No one questions how they never see the masks arrive or the leftovers leave the day after. The Feast of the Exceptional Rose is about love, romance, and the Exceptional Rose after all, the masks are a mere societal custom that makes the day all the more fun.

There are other things that no one questions, such as where the masks are stored throughout the year. Despite the many, many, people who make a living on the less noble side of the law no one has ever stumbled upon the warehouse the Masters must surely keep them in. There are no frustrated tales shared with you over a drink on Watchmaker's Hill or a spider fight at the Docks about stealing what should've been a shipment of glim and getting masks instead. It must be rather large storage facility to accommodate the vast number of masks sold every year. If anyone were to think of it, it would be odd, but no one questions something so wrapped up in logistics.

Just as no one questions who makes the masks. They all look the same, those the urchins wear and the ones that grace the Court of the Traitor Empresses could be one in the same, yet no one has ever been employed to create them. You have never heard the tale of someone gluing cheap jewelry and ribbons to paper when down on their luck. This is despite the fact that most people go through at least two of the masks every year. There are, after all, so very many ways to lose your mask throughout the day. But the stalls and shops always have more and at an Echo apiece it's not a hassle to purchase another.

Yet, no one questions why the gutters and trash bins aren't clogged with masks by the end of the Festival. For despite the many occasions that arise to cast aside your mask they are never laying underfoot. Never, not even when having been disappointed at an unmasking you attempt to retrieve your fallen mask. But, again, it isn't a hassle to buy a new one. There are so very many people moving around and it must've gotten kicked out of sight. Surely, despite never having kicked one yourself. It's not as though the mask could disappear in the time between leaving your hand and hitting the floor.

No one stops to think about why it is the Feast of the Exceptional Rose when actually seeing the Rose takes so much work. No one truly believes the one at the Carnival is real and rumors say that seeing the real thing takes quite a bit of work, connections, and money. Of course the Feast is really a celebration of love and romance and all those things, so the Duchess whispered to you one evening, the Bazaar holds dear. Things that normally come at a price in Fallen London, but one day a year they are celebrated freely. And no one questions it, lest of all you.


End file.
